not be described to the many who have experienced the difference
between the old man and the new man of before and after coffee. The
galley (kitchen) fire of ships of war used to be started at seven
bells of the mid-watch (3.30 A.M.); and the officers, and most of the
men, who next came on duty, managed to have coffee, the latter
husbanding their rations to this end. Since those days a benevolent
regulation has allowed an extra ration of coffee to the crew for this
purpose, so that no man goes without, or works the morning watch on an
empty stomach. For the morning watch was very busy. Then, on several
days of the week, the seamen washed their clothes. Then the upper deck
was daily scrubbed; sometimes the mere washing off the soap-suds left
from the clothes, sometimes with brooms and sand, sometimes the solemn
ceremony of holy-stoning with its monotonous musical sound of
grinding. Along with these, dovetailed in as opportunity offered, in a
sailing-ship under way there went on the work of readjusting the yards
and sails; a pull here and a pull there, like a woman getting herself
into shape after sitting too long in one position. Yards trimmed to a
nicety; the two sheets of each sail close home alike; all the canvas
taut up, from the weather-tacks of the courses to the weather-earings
of the royals; no slack weather-braces, or weather-leaches, letting a
bight of loose canvas sag like an incipient double chin. When these
and a dozen other little details had remedied the disorders of the
night, due to the invariable slacking of cordage under strain, the
ship was fit for any eye to light on, like a conscious beauty going
forth conquering and to conquer. I doubt the crew grumbled and d----d
a little under their breath, for the process was tedious; yet it was
not only a fad, but necessary, and the deck-officer who habitually
neglected it might possibly rise to an emergency, but was scarcely
otherwise worth his salt. In my humble judgment, he had better have
worn a frock-coat unbuttoned.
Occupation in plenty was not the only solace of a morning watch; at
least in the trades. While the men were washing their clothes, the
midshipman of the watch, amid the exhilaration of his coffee, and with
the cool sea-water careering over his bare feet, had ample leisure to
watch the break of day: the gradual lighting up of the zenith, the
rosy tints gathering and growing upon the tiny, pearly trade-clouds of
which I have spoken, the blue of the water gradually revealing itself,
laughing with white-caps, like the Psalmist's valleys of corn; until
at last the sun appeared, never direct from the sea, but from these
white cloud banks which extend less than five degrees above it. Such a
scene presents itself day after day, day after day, monotonous but
never wearisome, to a vessel running down the trades; that is,
steering from east to west, with fixed, fair breeze, as I have more
than once had the happiness to do. Then, as the saying was, a
fortnight passed without touching brace or tack, because no change of
wind; a slight exaggeration, for frequent squalls required the canvas
to be handled, but substantially true in impression. Balmy weather and
a steady gait, rarely more than seven or eight knots--less than two
hundred miles a day; but who would be in haste to quit such
conditions, where the sun rose astern daily with the joy of a giant
running his course, bringing assurance of prosperity, and sank to rest
ahead smiling, again behind the dimpling clouds which he tinged like
mother-of-pearl.
Such was not our lot in the _Congress_, for we were bound south,
across the trades. This, with some bad luck, brought us close-hauled,
that we might pass the equator nothing to the westward of thirty
degrees of west longitude; otherwise we might fall to leeward of Cape
St. Roque. This ominous phrase meant that we might be so far to the
westward that the southeast trades, when reached, would not let the
ship pass clear of this easternmost point of Brazil on one stretch;
that we would strike the coast north of it and have to beat round,
which actually happened. Consequently we never had a fair wind, to set
a studding-sail, till we were within three or four days of Bahia. This
encouraging incident, the first of the kind since the ship went into
commission, also befell in one of my mid-watches, and an awful mess
our unuse made of it. All the gear seemed to be bent with a half-dozen
round turns; the stun'sail-yards went aloft wrong end uppermost,
dangling in the most extraordinary and wholly unmanageable attitudes;
everything had to be done over and over again, till at last the case
looked desperate. Finally the lieutenant of the watch came forward in
wrath. He was a Kentuckian, very competent, ordinarily very
good-tempered; but there was red in his hair. When he got sufficiently
near he tucked the speaking-trumpet under his arm, where it looked
uncommonly like a fat cotton umbrella, himself suggesting a farmer
inspecting an intended purchase, and in this posture delivered to us a
stump speech on our shortcomings. This, I fear, I will have to leave
to the reader's imagination. It would require innumerable dashes, and
even so the emphasis would be lost. My relief had cause to be pleased
that those stun'sails were set by four o'clock, when he came on deck.
Ours the labor, his the reward.
* * * * *
A few days more saw us in Bahia; and with our arrival on the station
began a round of duties and enjoyments which made life at twenty
pleasant enough, both in the passage and in retrospect, but which
scarcely afford material for narration. Our two chief ports, Rio de
Janeiro and Montevideo, were then remote and provincial. They have
become more accessible and modern; but at the time of my last
visit--already over thirty years ago--they had lost in local color and
particular attraction as much as they had gained in convenience and
development. Street-cars, double-ended American ferry-boats, electric
lights, and all the other things for which these stand, are doubtless
good; but they make places seem less strange and so less interesting.
But I suppose there must still be in the business streets that
pervading odor of rum and sugar which tells that you are in the
tropics; still there must be the delicious hot calm of the early
morning, before the sea-breeze sets in, the fruit-laden boats plying
over the still waters to the ships of war; still that brilliant access
of life and animation which comes sparkling in with the sea-breeze,
and which can be seen in the offing, approaching, long before it
enters the bay. The balance of better and worse will be variously
estimated by various minds. The magnificent scenery of Rio remains,
and must remain, short of earthquake; the Sugar Loaf, the distant
Organ mountains, the near, high, surrounding hills, the numerous
bights and diversified bluffs, which impart continuous novelty to the
prospect. It is surprising that in these days of travel more do not go
just to see that sight, even if they never put foot on shore; though I
would not commend the omission. I see, too, in the current newspapers,
that Secretary Root has attributed to the women of Uruguay to-day the
charm which we youngsters then found in those who are now their
grand-mothers. As Mr. Secretary cannot be very far from my own age, we
have here the mature confirmation of an impression which otherwise
might be attributed to the facility of youth.
An interesting, though not very important, reminiscence of things now
passed away was the coming and going of numerous vessels, usually
small, carrying the commercial flags of the Hanse cities, Bremen,
Hamburg, and Lubeck, now superseded on the ocean by that of the German
Empire. Scarcely a morning watch which did not see in its earlier
hours one or more of these stealing out of port with the tail of the
land breeze. These remnants of the "Easterlings," a term which now
survives only in "sterling," were mostly small brigs of some two
hundred tons, noticeable mainly for their want of sheer; that is,
their rails, and presumably their decks, were level, without rise at
the extremities such as most vessels show.
Up to the middle of the last century, Rio, thanks probably to its
remoteness, had escaped the yellow-fever. But the soil and climate
were propitious; and about 1850 it made good a footing which it never
relinquished. At the time of our cruise it was endemic, and we
consequently spent there but two or three months of the cooler season,
June to September. Even so, visiting the city was permitted to only a
few selected men of the foremast hands. The habits of the seamen were
still those of a generation before, and drink, with its consequent
reckless exposure, was a right-hand man to Yellow Jack. All shore
indulgence was confined to Montevideo, where we spent near half of the
year; and being limited to one or two occasions only, of two or three
days duration each, it was signalized by those excesses which, in
conjunction with the absence of half the crew at once, put an end to
all ordinary routine and drill on board. My friend, the captain of the
forecastle, who apprehended that the Southern leaders would lose their
property, a self-respecting, admirably behaved man in ordinary times,
was usually hoisted on board by a tackle when he returned: for
Montevideo affords only an open roadstead for big ships, and
frequently a rough sea. The story ran that he secured a room on going
ashore, provided for the safety of his money, bought a box of gin,
and went to bed. This I never verified; but I remember a nautical
philosopher among the crew enlarging, in my hearing, on the folly of
drink. To its morality he was indifferent; but from sad experience he
avouched that it incapacitated you for other enjoyments, regular and
irregular, and that he for one should quit. To-day things are
changed--revolutionized. There may be ports too sickly to risk lives
in; but the men to be selected now are the few who cannot be trusted,
the percentage which every society contains. This result will be
variously interpreted. Some will attribute it to the abolition of the
grog ration, the removal of temptation, a change of environment.
Others will say that the extension of frequent leave, and consequent
opportunity, has abolished the frenzied inclination to make the
most--not the best--of a rare chance; has renewed men from within.
Personally, I believe the last. Together with the gradual rise of tone
throughout society, rational liberty among seamen has resulted in
rational indulgence. "Better England free than England sober."
In the end it was from Montevideo that we sailed for home in June,
1861. During the preceding six months, mail after mail brought us
increasing ill tidings of the events succeeding the election of
Lincoln. Somewhere within that period a large American steamboat, of
the type then used on Long Island Sound, arrived in the La Plata for
passenger and freight service between Montevideo and Buenos Ayres. Her
size and comfort, her extensive decoration and expanses of gold and
white, unknown hitherto, created some sensation, and gave abundant
supply to local paragraphists. Her captain was a Southerner, and his
wife also; of male and female types. He commented to me briefly, but
sadly, "Yes, we have now two governments"; but she was all aglow.
Never would she lay down arms; M. Ollivier's light heart was "not in
it" with hers; her countenance shone with joy, except when clouded
with contempt for the craven action of the _Star of the West_, a
merchant-steamer with supplies for Fort Sumter which had turned back
before the fire of the Charleston batteries. Never could she have done
such a thing. What influence women wield, and how irresponsible! And
they want votes!
In feeling, most of us stood where this captain did, sorrowful,
perplexed; but in feeling only, not in purpose. We knew not which
became us most, grief, or stern satisfaction that at last a doubtful
matter was to be settled by arms; but, with one or two exceptions,
there was no hesitancy, I believe, on the part of the officers as to
the side each should take. There were four pronounced Southerners: two
of them messmates of mine, from New Orleans. The other two were the
captain and lieutenant of marines. None of these was extreme, except
the captain, whom, though well on in middle life, I have seen stamp up
and down raging with excitement. On one occasion, so violent was his
language that I said to him he would do well to put ice to his head;
an impertinence, considering our relative ages, but almost warranted.
I think that he possibly took over the lieutenant, who was from a
border State, and, like the midshipmen, rather sobered than
enthusiastic at the prospects; though these last had no doubts as to
their own course. There was also a sea lieutenant from the South, who
said to me that if his State was fool enough to secede, she might go,
for him; he would not fight against her, but he would not follow her.
I believe he did escape having to fight in her waters, but he was in
action on the Union side elsewhere, and, I expect, revised this
decision. This halting allegiance, thinking to serve two masters, was
not frequent; but there were instances. Of one such I knew. He told me
himself that he on a certain occasion had said in company that he
would not leave the navy, but would try for employment outside the
country; whereon an officer standing by said to him that that appeared
a pretty shabby thing, to take pay and dodge duty. The remark sank
deep; he changed his mind, and served with great gallantry. It seems
to me now almost an impiety to record, but, knowing my father's warm
love for the South, I hazarded to the marine captain a doubt as to his
position. He replied that there could be no doubt whatever. "All your
father's antecedents are military; there is no military spirit in the
North; he must come to us." Many Southerners, not by any means most,
had formed such impressions.
The remainder of the officers were not so much Northern as Union, a
distinction which meant much in the feeling that underlies action. Our
second lieutenant, with soberer appreciation of conditions than the
marine, said to me, "I cannot understand how those others expect to
win in the face of the overpowering resources of the Northern States."
The leaders of the Confederacy, too, understood this; and while I am
sure that expected dissension in the North, and interference from
Europe, counted for much in their complicated calculations, I imagine
that the marine's overweighted theory, of incompatibility between the
mercantile and military temperaments, also entered largely. My
Kentuckian expressed the characteristic, if somewhat crude, opinion,
that the two had better fight it out now, till one was well licked;
after which his head should be punched and he be told to be decent
hereafter. We had, however, one Northern fire-eater among the
midshipmen. He was a plucky fellow, but with an odd cast to his eyes
and a slight malformation, which made his ecstasies of wrath a little
comical. His denunciations of all half measures, or bounded
sentiments, quite equalled those of the marine officer on the other
side. If the two had been put into the same ring, little could have
been left but a few rags of clothes, so completely did they lose
their heads; but, as often happens with such champions, their
harangues descended mostly on quiet men, conveniently known as
doughfaces.
Doughfaces I suppose we must have been, if the term applied fitly to
those who, between the alternatives of dissolving the Union and
fighting one another, were longing to see some third way open out of
the dilemma. In this sense Lincoln, with his life-long record of
opposition to the extension of slavery, was a doughface. The marine
could afford to harden his face, because he believed there would be no
war--the North would not fight; while the midshipman, rather limited
intellectually, was happy in a mental constitution which could see but
one side of a case; an element of force, but not of conciliation. The
more reflective of my two Southern messmates, a man mature beyond his
years, said to me sadly, "I suppose there will be bloodshed beyond
what the world has known for a long time;" but he naturally shared the
prevalent opinion--so often disproved--that a people resolute as he
believed his own could not be conquered, especially by a commercial
community--the proverbial "nation of shopkeepers." Napoleon once had
believed the same, to his ruin. Commercial considerations undoubtedly
weigh heavily; but happily sentiment is still stronger than the
dollar. An amusing instance of the pocket influence, however, came to
my knowledge at the moment. Our captain's son received notice of his
appointment as lieutenant of marines, and sailed for home in an
American merchant-brig shortly before the news came of the firing on
Fort Sumter. When I next met him in the United States, he told me that
the brig's captain had been quite warmly Southern in feeling during
the passage; but when they reached home, and found that Confederate
privateers had destroyed some merchant-vessels, he went entirely over.
He had no use for people who would "rob a poor man of his ship and
cargo."
Our orders home, and tidings of the attack on Fort Sumter, came by the
same mail, some time in June. There were then no cables. The revulsion
of feeling was immediate and universal, in that distant community and
foreign land, as it had been two months before in the Northern States.
The doughfaces were set at once, like a flint. The grave and reverend
seigniors, resident merchants, who had checked any belligerent
utterance among us with reproachful regret that an American should be
willing to fight Americans, were converted or silenced. Every voice
but one was hushed, and that voice said, "Fight." I remember a
tempestuous gathering, an evening or two before we sailed, and one
middle-aged invalid's excited but despondent wish that he was five
hundred men. Such ebullitions are common enough in history, for causes
bad or good. They are to be taken at their true worth; not as a
dependable pledge of endurance to the end, but as an awakening, which
differs from that of common times as the blast of the trumpet that
summoned men at midnight for Waterloo differs from the lazy rubbing of
the eyes before thrusting one's neck into the collar of a working day.
The North was roused and united; a result which showed that, wittingly
or unwittingly, the Union leaders had so played the cards in their
hands as to score the first trick.
Our passage home was tedious but uneventful. I remember only the
incident that the flag-officer on one occasion played at old-time
warfare of his youth, by showing to a passing vessel a Spanish flag
instead of the American. The common ship life went on as though
nothing had happened. On an August evening we anchored in Boston lower
harbor, and Mr. Robert Forbes, then a very prominent character in
Boston, and in most nautical matters throughout the country, came
down in a pilot-boat, bringing newspapers to our captain, with whom he
was intimate. Then we first learned of Bull Run; and properly
mortified we of the North were, not having yet acquired that
indifference to a licking which is one of the first steps towards
success. Some time after the war was over an army officer of the North
repeated to me the comment on this affair made to him by a Southern
acquaintance, both being of the aforetime regular army. "I never," he
said, "saw men as frightened as ours were--except yours." The after
record of both parties takes all the sting out of these words, without
lessening the humor.
Immediately upon arrival, the oath of allegiance was tendered, and, of
course, refused by our four Southerners. They had doubtless sent in
their resignations; but by that time resignations were no longer
accepted, and in the following _Navy Register_ they appeared as
"dismissed." They were arrested on board the ship and taken as
prisoners to Fort Lafayette. I never again saw any of them; but from
time to time heard decisively of the deaths of all, save the
lieutenant of marines. One of the midshipmen drew from my father an
action which I have delighted to recall as characteristic. He wrote
from the fort, stating his comradeship with me in the past, and asking
if he could be furnished with certain military reading, for his
improvement and to pass time. Though suspicions of loyalty were rife,
and in those days easily started by the most trivial communication,
the books were sent. The war had but just ended, when one morning my
father received a letter expressing thanks, and enclosing money to the
supposed value of the books. The money was returned; but I, happening
to be at home, replied on my own account in such manner as a very
young man would. My father saw the addressed envelope, and
remonstrated. "Do you think it quite well and prudent to associate
yourself, at your age and rank, with one so recently in rebellion?
Will it not injure your standing?" I was not convinced; but I yielded
to a solicitude which under much more hazardous conditions he had not
admitted for himself, though known to be a Virginian. Shortly after
his death, while our sorrow was still fresh, I met a contemporary and
military intimate of his. "I want," he said, "to tell you an anecdote
of your father. We were associated on a board, one of the members of
which had proposed, as his own suggestion, a measure which I thought
fundamentally and dangerously erroneous. I prepared a paper contesting
the project and took it to your father. He read it carefully, and
replied, 'I agree with you entirely; but ---- will never forgive you,
and he is persistent and unrelenting towards those who thwart him. You
will make a life-long and powerful enemy. If I were you, I should not
lay this upon myself.' I gave way to his judgment, and kept back the
paper; but you may imagine my surprise when at the next meeting he
took upon himself the burden which he had advised me to shun. He made
an argument substantially on my lines, and procured the rejection of
the proposition. The result was a hostility which ceased only with his
life, but between which and me he had interposed."
VII
INCIDENTS OF WAR AND BLOCKADE SERVICE
1861-1862
The _Congress_, upon her return, was retained in commission, though
entirely useless, either for fighting or blockade, under modern
conditions. I suppose there were not yet enough of newer vessels to
spare her value as a figure-head. She was sent afterwards to Hampton
Roads, where in the following March she, with another sailing-frigate,
the _Cumberland_, fell helpless victims to the first Confederate
iron-clad. The staff of combatant sea officers was much changed; the
captain, the senior three lieutenants, and the midshipmen being
detached. Smith, the fourth lieutenant, remained as first; and, in the
absence of her captain on other duty, commanded and fell at her death
agony. I was sent first to the _James Adger_, a passenger-steamer then
being converted in New York for blockade duty, for which she was very
fit; but in ten days more I was moved on to the _Pocahontas_, a ship
built for war, a very respectable little steam-corvette, the only one
of her class--if such a bull as a class of one may be excused. She
carried one ten-inch gun and four 32-pounders, all smooth-bores. There
was, besides, one small nondescript rifled piece, upon which we looked
with more curiosity than confidence. Indeed, unless memory deceive,
the projectiles from it were quite as apt to go end over end as true.
It was rarely used.